Recent advances in the field of psychiatric genetics have brought about excitement and urgency to envision and design intelligently the next steps in order to inform the neurobiology of the psychiatric disorders and develop strategies for prevention, early intervention, or treatment. The primary goal of the meeting on the """"""""Genetic and Neural Complexity in Psychiatry"""""""" is to facilitate a discussion on the future of research in Psychiatry as it is shaped by the recent advances in genetics and newly emerging concepts and approaches in neuroscience. This meeting will bring together experts and open a dialogue between geneticists and neuroscientists allowing direct translation and speedy application of recent findings. The first planned meeting in the proposed series of 3 bi-annual meetings, will focus on deep sequencing approaches, which will allow discovery of rare, highly penetrant mutations, as well as on approaches designed to understand their impact on gene function, including the generation of mouse models. It will also address emerging reprogramming technologies that allow development of cellular models from patients carrying specific rare mutations as well as the pros and cons of studying additional animal species with particular emphasis on non-human primates. Finally, it will highlight and discuss novel approaches to decipher circuitry and communication in the disease brain.
This meeting brings together pre-eminent experts in a range of disciplines, including genetics, neurobiology, cell and developmental biology, and psychiatry, to identify issues of importance, and set goals and standards for the critical advancement of the field of Psychiatry. The time is opportune, since recent advances in the field of psychiatric genetics call for careful planning of the next steps in order to inform the neurobiology of the psychiatric disorders and develop strategies for prevention, early intervention, or treatment.
| Karayiorgou, Maria; Flint, Jonathan; Gogos, Joseph A et al. (2012) The best of times, the worst of times for psychiatric disease. Nat Neurosci 15:811-2 |
